Tea partier shares 'single greatest threat to America'
Chelsea Schilling
Steve Milloy |
NASHVILLE – "When it comes to your freedom in day-to-day life, environmentalists are the greatest threat to America now and America in the future."
That is the stern warning Junkscience.com publisher and self-described libertarian Steve Milloy told a packed room at the first national tea-party convention in Nashville today.
Milloy castigated both Republican and Democrat politicians for their global alarmism, saying those on the "right" have failed Americans because, "Republicans have been terrible when it comes to environmental issues," he said. "Don't even get me started about the nit-wit governor in California."
A resounding applause erupted from a crowd of 600 attendees.
He continued, "By contrast, there's the left. Although the left has think-tanks, they don't really need them. Their thinking was done for them by Karl Marx and hasn't changed much since. … The left rarely thinks; it usually just acts with reckless abandon."
Milloy called for the tea-party movement to become more engaged at every level of government in the battle against global-warming alarmism.
"Through global-warming alarmism and cap-and-trade regulation, the greens will use the force of government to tell us where we can work, where we can live, how many children we can have, how much energy we can use, how much water we can use, what sort of food we should eat, what the temperature of our homes can be, what sort of cars we can drive," he said. "In California, regulators are already deciding what color cars we can drive."
Modern environmentalist has nothing to do with saving the planet, Milloy explained, calling it a method in which socialists and totalitarians advance their social and political agendas.
"Let me make it absolutely clear to you that when it comes to your freedom in day-to-day life – or at least what's left – environmentalists are the greatest threat to America now and America in the future," he said. "Political extremism masquerading as environmentalism is a greater threat than Islamic terrorism. It's a greater threat than Iran's nuclear weapons. It's a greater threat than China's looming economic and military challenges. ... Liberal extremism, masquerading as environmentalism, is that subversive threat."
Milloy credited the tea-party movement with dealing a "shuddering body blow to cap and trade."
"But while it's in tatters, it is going to come back rebranded and repackaged," he warned. When cap and trade comes back under the euphemism of green energy, clean energy, green jobs or as the cotton candy and pony rides for everyone after 2010, it will still be an attack on our liberties and America itself."
Urging convention attendees to see how their lawmakers voted on the Waxman-Markey bill when they return home following the convention, he said, "If he or she voted for Waxman-Markey, please spend time this fall making sure they get voted out of office."
The crowd erupted in cheers.
Milloy concluded his speech by calling the legislation bad policy being advocated by bad people for a bad purpose.
"There's nothing you can tell cap-and-trade supporters that will change their minds," he said. "Global-warming science was always junk science."
Feb. 5, 2010